Searching
by Two and Fury
Summary: I'm not sure which episode this fits with, but it's after Charlie is found but before Claire is (until about 5 seconds in). Some chapters kind of dark, SawyerKate pairing coming into it soon. Please enjoy and review! CH 5 UP.
1. Chapter 1

"Locke. You, of all people, should understand this. Why I have to go alone," Kate pleaded with him.

All eyes turned to the mysterious older man. "Kate, I see where you're coming from. It's just too dangerous. That thing out there is too dangerous. We can't afford to lose you."

A disoriented but relatively unharmed Claire had stumbled into the beach camp earlier that morning. She remembered nothing, but was noticeably no longer pregnant. The community's collective sigh of relief subsided abruptly when they realized something.

* * *

"Claire. Claire! Where's the baby?" Jack demanded after making sure she was okay.

"Baby?" Claire asked. "Who has a baby?" She smiled dreamily.

"Bloody hell!" Charlie cried out when he heard her words. "You can't mean to say…"

Jack interrupted. "Whoever did this to her, they must have drugged her. They only wanted her until they could have the child."

"Who would…_do_ that?" Boone asked, disturbed.

"Someone who knows more about us than we know about them."

* * *

"Please, people! Look around you. Sickness. Sayid, Claire, Shannon, Sawyer, Charlie, they're all in no condition. It's all the others can do to keep up. Jack's the doctor! He's needed. Locke, to hunt for food. Michael's got a son of his own. Boone needs to stay with Shannon. The other survivors, they haven't been told enough of this to be called upon. I'm the only one. No connections, no one to go back to. Nothing to go back to." She paused. "Open your eyes, people!" Kate collapsed onto an outcropping of rocks. "I have to do something."

The group surveyed her in silence. Kate met the eyes of each successive person in the gathering. Michael. Jack. Sayid. Boone. Locke. Hurley. Charlie.

As she met no dissent, she grabbed her pack and pushed past the group, squinting as the late morning sun hit her face. She headed towards the treeline.

"Kate!" Pause. Locke ran up after her. Wordlessly he handed her a sheathed hunting knife, and turned away.

She clipped it to her cargo pants and forged on.

* * *

Sawyer sat dozing under his tarp, sunglasses on and Watership Down clasped loosely in his rough palms.

"Glad to see you're making yourself useful," the dry voice pierced the afternoon air.

"Can it, Tubby," Sawyer spat back at Hurley.

Ignoring him, Hurley went on. "But if you could spare a moment, we'd love to have someone to make a water run."

"Wait a golly-gee second there, partner," Sawyer said, his curiosity peaked as he cracked an eyelid. "Freckles is the water girl. Why don't you go bother her."

"You mean you don't know? I thought the news had pretty well worked its way through camp by now. I suppose people'd actually have to want to talk to you before you heard, though."

"Well, I do love a good gab session. Spit it out, McLard." His voice carried across the coast to Jack.

"I wouldn't have thought you cared, Sawyer. Kate left this morning to search for Claire's baby—oh, wait; you do know that Claire came back this morning, right? And Charlie's actually been back at camp a few days now!" Jack had just about had it with Sawyer's lack of effort to do anything. "Point is," he concluded, dropping the bag of empty water bottles into Sawyer's lap, "Kate's off looking for Claire's baby, of which we know neither gender nor age, potentially and likely confronting whatever it was that stole it from her. It gets better, Sawyer: she's by herself."

"Really now? Doctor Tarzan didn't feel like going wandering in the jungle with Jane?" He sneered. "Kate's a big girl, Jacko. She's obviously more put together than you are right about now, cowboy."

As Jack and Hurley turned and trudged back towards the caves, Sawyer shouted at their retreating backs, "Keep your pants on, Doc. She'll come home."

Later that night, Sawyer sat up while the rest of the island's inhabitants were dropping off to sleep. By the flickering light of his lighter, he wrote in a crinkly notebook he'd recovered from the fuselage.

"I am going to kick that little girl's ass all the way back to Australia when she gets back here. Crazy woman. What the hell'd she go alone for? That monster had better get to her first, or she'll wish it had—"

"Shit!" he yelled as the lighter's flame burned into his thumb. He dropped it into the sand and stuck his throbbing finger into his mouth. That's the last time he tries to write in the goddamn dark.

* * *

Not more than three miles away, Kate lay uncomfortably on a tree root, leaning against the base of the trunk. No way was she sleeping out here, alone. Not when some psychotic baby-stealer was on the loose. She was just taking a break. She shivered. Building a fire would draw undesired attention to her location. Just had to wait out the last few hours of the night.

* * *

Jack was slowly going insane. Everyone wanted to know about Claire, and Kate, and the baby. The only thing no one was asking about was the someone, or someones, who had taken the infant and carelessly dumped off its helpless, memoryless, post-natal mother. No one wanted to know that. Not even Jack did.

* * *

He stalked through the jungle, towards the place he had been told was right for the sacrifice. The infant girl he had silenced, good old-fashioned chloroform. His client had told him the baby should be conscious for the ceremony, but it made such a hellish racket that unconscious would just have to do. Coming to the designated clearing, he set the infant child on the stump in the grassy center. Taking the hatchet lying next to it, he mumbled the ridiculous mumbo-jumbo his client had crazily ordered. Raising the weapon over his head, he suddenly brought it down. A sickly snap, the thunk of the hatchet embedded in the stump, then silence.

A stricken Kate straightened from her crouch behind a neighboring tree, unseen by the killer, and didn't stop running until she met the ocean. Crouching down, she wept and vomited away the pain until dehydration overtook her and she passed out of consciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thank you, Evermore, my first reviewer! Just wanted to warn my readership, this chapter's kind of...dark, at the end. Please read and review!

* * *

"Sawyer. Sawyer!" Boone yelled from beyond an outcropping of rocks into the ocean. He would be calling for Jack, but he was all the way at the caves, and Sawyer's camp was closest to him. Hearing no response, he sprinted around the rocks to where Sawyer lay napping. "Get up, man!" Boone cried, frantically shaking him awake.

"Why the hell you not lettin' the sleeping dogs lie, boy?" Sawyer growled, but Boone was already dragging him back to where he had found her, unconscious.

"It's Kate."

* * *

Sawyer paced impatiently at the mouth of the cave where Jack was examining Kate.

"Could you stop that for five minutes?" Jack snapped. "You're making me dizzy, and you're blocking my light."

"All you had to do was ask, Doc." The cold man was not used to…caring this much. About someone else. He strode to the side of the makeshift examination table and took in the sight of Kate. Pale, disheveled, with dark circles around her eyes and swollen cheeks, she was almost unrecognizable.

"She's been vomiting. And she hasn't slept or eaten in a long time."

"So can you fix her, Doctor Jackass?" Sawyer snarled.

"Severe dehydration. Getting her on some fluids will help." Jack was unfazed by the man's outburst. He was almost oblivious to anyone and everything that was not Kate.

"Shouldn't she be awake by now?" Boone asked, walking in. He had been sent as a delegate for the relative crowd waiting anxiously outside.

"I'm a little worried about that. She…" Jack trailed off as he turned back to Kate on the table. Sawyer had found her hand and was gently stroking her wrist with his thumb. As he clasped it, a flutter of eyelids brought Jack back to full attention. Grabbing a bottle of water, he focused his intent gaze on her face.

"Hey," she rasped, and immediately broke into fits of coughing.

"Easy, easy. Here, take some of this." Boone propped her up and Jack handed her a cup of cool water. "Better?" he asked, when she had had about half the bottle.

Nodding, she stared up at…Sawyer? What was he doing here? Afraid to speak, her eyes asked the question of him, then slowly creased closed as she passed out of consciousness again.

Sawyer dropped her hand and slunk out of the infirmary without another scathing word.

* * *

Nightmares chased her. Claire was blaming her baby's death on her. Sawyer condemned her with his stare. Every time, she woke to the sight of Jack and assorted other visitors, gasping for air and water and redemption.

Sawyer never came again. Jack never left. She couldn't keep down anything outside of water, but he made sure she got plenty of that. Within two days she was sitting up and walking out on her own. She couldn't return to the beach, though, for a full week after that. The last thing she needed, said Jack, was a draining environment like the hot, dry beach. She was almost positive that the last thing she really needed, he thought, was the chance to see Sawyer.

She was eating now, though little, and had moved back to the beach. Nightmares continued, and even in the daytime she saw the murderer of Claire's child through the mask of trees. Hallucination? She wasn't sure.

The image of the gruesome death was painted on the insides of her eyelids, making her yearn for daylight to finally come every time night fell.

She couldn't talk to anyone. The questions were endless and were really, very good questions. But she couldn't answer them. They knew she had seen something terrible out there.

Thank God Claire had baby amnesia. It was painful to watch her in her confusion, but much better, Kate reasoned, than the knowledge of having lost a child.

* * *

One night, when Kate was trying to flee sleep, she heard the swish of sand beneath footsteps behind her. She didn't turn as he plopped down in the sand beside her.

"Sawyer." It was the first word she'd said in days.

"Sweetness."

Silence.

"God, Sweetness, what have you seen?"

Silence.

He pulled himself wearily up and ambled back to his tent.

After he was gone, she looked to the sheath hooked around the belt loop of her jeans. She hadn't done it in years. However, the more she thought about it the more she wanted it. Running an absentminded finger across the scars from her self-destructive past days, she unbuckled the sheath. With one icy stroke she could wash away her pain, let it leak out of her.

She hiked up her tee shirt on one side, the side opposite the place of the old scars.

In a few moments—oh, the sweet release felt so good—she was done and she walked down to the ocean to clean the wound.

His eyes watched her in solemn silence.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Thank you all for the generous reviews. They make me warm and fuzzy!  
This chapter is one long scene...please R & R!

* * *

Thesurvivors had grown restless. 

"What happened?"

"Is the baby alive?"

"Did you see it?"

"Kate. I—We need to know what you saw. If it endangers the others we need to know. You can trust me. You're going to make it through this."

That last one was Jack. But you knew that.

She didn't speak. Not even to him. She couldn't. The pressure was building inside her and she relieved a little of it every night in her old way. There were five fresh cuts in her right side; just one more would make them identical to the old six on the left. Except these new scratches were red and blistered, the old smooth and pale against her alabaster skin. She was sitting on the beach in this way when she felt the familiar body plop down beside her.

This time, no one spoke.

"You know," said Sawyer, breaking the silence, "some of us wait patiently for our turn to get stabbed." He gestured pointedly to the white bandage on his right bicep.

At that, she got up and started to leave, but he grabbed her forearm and pulled her back down.

"Didn't mean to scare you off, Freckles," he amended, using the old moniker she hadn't heard in weeks. "Just let me take a look—" he stopped short as he pulled up the edge of her tank top and swore. "Holy shit, Freckles! What the hell are you lettin' them get infected for?" She shushed him. The noise he was making could wake the dead. "I've got a first aid kit in my tent. Come on," he offered.

"I don't need your help, Sawyer."

"Sweetness, I beg to differ." When she wouldn't budge, he lifted her into a fireman's carry and took her up the beach. She was too tired to fight back.

"Alrighty," he declared, dropping her unceremoniously into a beaten-up airline seat, but taking care to avoid her slashed hip. Taking out a small white box with the Red Cross painted across the lid, he asked, "So how long has it been since you slept?"

"You sound like Jack."

"Well I damned well do feel like him," he said jauntily, snapping on a pair of disposable latex gloves.

"Are those really necessary? It's not like you're giving me a colonoscopy," she warily inquired.

"I'm just having a little fun, Sweet cheeks. Humor me. I'm the doctor now." He smiled that disarming smile, but she wasn't swayed. Claire's baby's killer could probably smile just as innocently without a qualm.

She sighed. "Six days."

"What's six days?" he asked.

"I'm answering your question, Doctor," she answered sarcastically. "Six days since I last slept."

"Well that's a dandy. Why ain't you sleeping like a baby?" Her eyes widened and he realized his mistake. "Oh…That was awful rude of me, wasn't it, Sweetness?"

"It's okay."

"What happened out there? What did you see?" he prodded.

"You wouldn't want to know, Sawyer."

"Then how come you ain't talkin' to anybody but me?"

Good question. Just another one she didn't have an answer to. Something about him made her want to trust him, to unload on him. Contrary to all basic instincts about his character. "Okay, Sawyer. You win. What do you want?"

"I do love how you ask that question." This garnered a dirty look from Kate. "Okay, right. Not now, right, Freckles?" She nodded and he went on. "I want to know what happened to the baby."

He waited in silence.

"Oh, God…she's dead. He—he took the hatchet…" She sighed and choked back a sob. "God, Sawyer, why are you making me remember this?"

"Seems to me you're already rememberin', too much," he said, gesturing towards the side of her hip. He was patching it up now, running feather-light fingers over her skin. "So," he said, resuming the inquisition, "you're talkin' about a he. Someone from the crash?"

"No—at least I've never seen him before. The baby's unconscious. The clearing, when I had just wandered up, he took the hatchet, and then she was dead…" She stuttered here, and clasped a desperate handful of Sawyer's shirt as he leaned over to tape the gauze. He dropped the tape, his eyes locked on hers. "I ran. I could've stopped him, but I…It was so gruesome. The sound that hatchet made when he brought it down—" Tears were flowing hotly down her face now. The look of her, it almost made his armor crack. He let his guard down for one second, and he had a blubbering woman in his arms, her own thrust around his neck. She buried her face in his shoulder as he awkwardly patted her back. He wasn't so good at the comforting thing.

"You know, Sweetness, it's gettin' harder for me to be Saint Sawyer. Unless you're planning on spendin' the night, if I were you I'd get out now, while you can still resist me."

Ugh. She just wanted to punch him in the jaw. How did she ever think she could talk to him. She would never live this one down, not tough-girl Kate.

"I actually thought you were human under all that. I also thought I could stop that horrible…thing from hurting the baby. Well, as long as I'm oh for two, I think I'll try to intercept that killer and make him pay." She fingered the knife in its sheath and turned to storm off.

Sawyer laughed, making her spin to face him. "Sweetness. It's been two weeks. What makes you think he's hangin' around out there, waitin' patiently for you to come kick his ass?"

She gritted her teeth. "I see him. All the time, just through the trees there."

This really cracked him up. "Six days, Freckles. You give me six sleepless nights and I'll see whatever you want me to. You're hallucinating. Without shuteye for that long, anyone would start seein' things," he scoffed.

"Maybe. But maybe I'm crazy enough to believe myself when I see him.

"And also," she added, turning and walking briskly towards the ocean, forcing him to follow her out of sight of the rest of the survivors, "Has it ever crossed your mind that if that man wasn't on the plane when it crashed, he got here some other way? The same way he's going to get off it. And I'll be damned, Sawyer, if I'm passing up a chance to get off this island with him."

She stared up into his hard eyes. "I think I'll tag along on this little field trip of yours, Freckles. Hell, it sounds like fun."

"Um—" Her protest was silenced with his calloused thumb against her lips.

"Uh-uh-uh! Not advisable, Sweetness. Unless you want Jack to find out about these," he sneered, his hand moving to grab her right hip. She winced at the contact as the gauze pulled at her cuts. "Or those." He peeled up the left corner of her shirt and smirked. "Cute past, haven't you? Can't wait to hear all about it," he whispered, his mouth bumping her ear. She shivered at his touch. He laughed and walked back to his camp to pack.

What was it about him, she wondered, biting her lip where his hand had been moments before, that made her feel so stupid, but so alive? More alive than she was used to.


	4. Chapter 4

"Where's Kate?" Jack demanded of Hurley the following afternoon. "And where's Sawyer?" His eyes, combing the beach, found two absences he didn't particularly like, especially not together.

"I don't know, man," he replied. "They went off to get water together this morning but haven't come back."

"And they took the water bottles?"

"I thought so, man. I didn't see them, but they each had a backpack."

"Dammit. Dammit!" Jack cursed, spotting the string of empty water bottles down the beach under Sawyer's tarp.

"What is it, man?" Hurley asked, turning to follow Jack's gaze.

"They're gone."

* * *

Kate and Sawyer tramped through the woods, not saying a word.

"You know, Sweetness, I've been thinkin'…"

"That's surprising," Kate deadpanned.

"And this is what I think. You an' I, we've been skatin' around each other. We're like two peas in a pod, really. Confidence Man and his sidekick, Convict Girl. Sounds like superheroes."

"How philosophical of you, Sawyer. Could you get to the point?" She was tired of his antics.

"Anything for you, Sweetness. Like I said, we're just going in circles—"

"Actually, we're not," Kate interrupted. She stopped, so suddenly that Sawyer nearly plowed her over. "This is the place." She walked to the center of the clearing.

Sawyer's eyes widened at the sight of the tree stump. Bloodstains covered it, and a hatchet was embedded in the wood. A rust-colored substance encrusted the blade of the weapon and dotted spatters trailed up the handle. "And you were where, when you saw him?"

"I was crouched right over here," she picked her way to the cover she had been behind and turned to face him.

"Kate! Look out!"

She started to turn, in an effort to see what he was talking about, but she was too late. The familiar cold steel was pressed against her graceful neck, digging into her jawline.

"Well hello. How nice of you to grace me with your presence," her captor whispered in her ear, but loud enough for Sawyer to hear. "You," he said more loudly to Sawyer, "One more step and her head is gone." Sawyer froze in his tracks.

Kate spoke up, painfully so as the knife dug into her flesh increasingly with each passing word, "Kind of like the innocent baby you murdered?"

He tugged the knife, and she could feel the warm blood seeping down her neck. Sawyer watched in horror. "Kind of that," he whispered menacingly, "but slower. You're a feisty one, aren't you?" he growled, continuing. "We might just have a little fun one we lose Wonderboy here." He ran his hand through her hair and down her back to her waist. Her hand on the opposite side came to rest on the knife lying in its sheath and silently unbuckled it.

"I'm thinking, not so much." She punctuated her last word by drawing her knife up and plunging it into his upper leg in one fluid motion. Taking advantage of the reflexive loosening of his grip as he grunted in pain, she wrenched from his grasp.

Sawyer moved in, clubbing the mysterious man over the head with a fallen branch to knock him out. He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his pack. Kate flinched visibly.

"Don't worry, Freckles, they're not for you." He chuckled and handcuffed the unconscious man to a tree. "We'll come back for him. But now, you." He gently grabbed hold of her chin and lifted it to get a better look. She winced.

"I'm probably going to bruise."

"Well right now, I'd be more worried about blood loss than looking pretty. He got you good."

She laughed bitterly. "I got him back."

"I didn't bring the first aid kit." He shook his head. "But you need a Band-Aid, or something."

"You don't want to admit that we need Jack, do you?" she smirked.

"We need Jack? Last time I checked, Sweetness, I wasn't the one bleeding from the neck." His hand still lingered at her chin, and now he moved it up to cup her face. "And you don't need Jack," he continued. "Me with a first aid kit would do just as well."

"Somehow I doubt that," she shot back.

"Well, I did fix your little suicidal venture," he replied scathingly.

She raised her arm to smack him, but he caught it mid-swing. "You. Don't. Know. What. It's. Like," she breathed forcefully through clenched teeth.

"Don't talk about things you know nothing about," he snarled. He dropped her arm and pulled his shirt over his head. Turning his back towards her, he resumed, "What do you think all that is, Sweetness?"

She gasped. A network of raised scars marred his toned back. The white streaks rippled, across and across, as his muscles moved sleekly beneath his skin. The trail ran from his left shoulderblade almost all the way to his waist.

"I had rough times in my twenties. We have more in common than you might like to believe." His voice grated across her warring mind. Part of her wanted to trace all the abrasions with her fingers, make the hurt go away. A much bigger part, however, just wanted to run away. That part was afraid of this broken man. Just how deep had she gotten herself in?

The bigger part won out. Running, half-tripping over herself, she sprinted across the clearing, unsure of her destination but knowing she just wanted to get out. She hadn't gotten far, however, before she felt lightheaded and collapsed onto the grass.

"Damned blood loss," Sawyer cursed. "Now I gotta carry you."

* * *

When Sawyer, later that night, staggered into the caves with Kate in his arms and covered in blood, he drew plenty of attention.

"What did you do to her?" Jack, jumping up, demanded.

"Don't jump to conclusions, pretty boy. This is the handiwork of our good friend the baby killer. I take no credit."

Jack had cleared a space for Sawyer to lay Kate on his bedroll. "What?" A look of astonishment clouded his face." Over here," he directed.

Sawyer gently lowered her to the space Jack pointed out. "Baby. Killer. We handcuffed him to a tree in the jungle after he attacked her and she stabbed him. Long story. Freckles saw him do the baby in. Didn'tcha, sugar?" He ran his fingers through her hair, untangling the brambled mess it had become.

Jack took a deep breath. _Sawyer just likes to annoy you by fondling Kate_, he told himself. "Everybody out," he demanded. While the rest were filing out, Sawyer lingered. "This means you, too."

Sawyer smirked and sauntered out. "Of course it does."


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Sorry it's been a while, everyone. Lots of crazy end-of-semester stuff is happening lately. But here's an update! Enjoy.

* * *

"We need to stop meeting like this," a concerned Jack told Kate early the next morning.

This garnered a smile from Kate. It faded as she brought a quizzical hand to her throat. A bulky gauze bandage made it awkward to move her head.

"Feel okay?" Jack asked. "You lost a lot of blood…enough that Sawyer carried you all the way back."

"I don't remember…after he…oh." Her mind drew a blank after Sawyer showed her his back. But she couldn't tell Jack that. She sighed inwardly. All this secret-keeping was taking its toll. She wanted to tell this sweet, caring man everything, if only he would understand. If only he wouldn't view her as just another clinical crazy.

He picked up her hand. Cold. "Michael, Boone, and Sawyer went to get that handcuffed guy a little while ago. Do you want to talk about that?"

His honest, pleading eyes melted her resolution. Besides, he was bound to hear it anyway eventually.

After she told him everything, excluding the cutting and the way Sawyer made her feel, he walked with her back to the beach, where the three plus one were waiting.

* * *

"So he's not on the manifest?" Jack inquired as he studied the scruffy, violent-looking man, now handcuffed to a particularly large chunk of fuselage on the far side of the beach. Thankfully they had found a safe spot devoid of any survivors' camps.

"We can't be sure, as long as we don't know his name," explained Boone.

"I bet Sayid wouldn't mind havin' a crack at him," Sawyer said dryly.

"Kate, was that you?" Locke asked with a nod towards the captive's leg."

She nodded. Were they going to lock her up, too? Was she a danger to the others?

"It's pretty impressive. A complex wound."

She felt relieved, until she caught Jack studying her, a dark expression on his face. He was suspicious of her and what she had done to warrant a listing on America's Most Wanted.

She turned back to the as yet anonymous killer and winced. Bringing a hand up to the bandage, she thought, This is going to take some getting used to.

"Jack. Are you going to bandage that?" Kate asked, bringing everyone's attention back to the matter at hand.

"Yeah. Let me…Let me go grab the supplies." He jogged off towards the caves.

Sawyer and Kate brought the others up to speed, and Jack soon returned to diagnose and bandage the man's wound.

"It's pretty deep, but it missed the artery. Whoever pulled the knife back out," Here he looked up at Kate and Sawyer, "preserved a pretty clean exit. Complex, yes," he asserted, glancing at Locke, "but not fatal. Or even particularly harmful, that is, besides effectively severing motor ability for the time being." He paused. "Incredible." He was astonished. How did Kate know to find that kind of position with a weapon? There were so many secrets with her.

While all this was taking place, the captive maintained a stolid silence, staring icily at each one present in turn. His cold eyes rested the longest on Kate, who shifted uncomfortably under his impassive gaze.

She had wanted so badly to kill him out there in the jungle with Sawyer. She could have, too, but she knew restraint. Then she would have been condemned, as he had been, as a killer. She couldn't handle that again.

* * *

Kate left the captive's site late that evening. They had been questioning him for hours, to no avail. The only response was that cold, numb stare.

She felt Sawyer's approach before she saw him. She was developing a sort of sixth-sense for him, his comings and goings.

He fell into step beside her. "Has he said anything?"

"Not since he called you Wonderboy and hit on me yesterday," she quipped. "I keep shuddering, just thinking about his hands on me."

"Me, too," he answered truthfully.

This elicited a laugh from Kate. "You are a charmer, aren't you, Sawyer?"

"Hell yes."

She sobered for a moment. "I never had you pegged for the self-destructive type. Too cocky."

"Really? Well, I definitely expected it from you. You are way too put together, or I thought so, until I saw that." He slipped an arm around her waist and traced the square of gauze through her tank top.

They were coming up on Kate's setup. "Goodnight, Sawyer."

He stopped and stood in front of her. "No goodnight kiss?"

"You haven't got anything I want!" she declared incredulously.

"Oh, I do." Sawyer winked suggestively. "You'll see, eventually."

"You are a pig, did you know that, Sawyer?" She turned towards her bedroll.

"It'll get pretty cold tonight…you sure you don't want me to stick around?"

"Goodnight, Sawyer," she sighed dramatically as he slunk off.

* * *

The following morning, the questioning continued.

"What is your name?"

"Who sent you here?"

"How did you get here?"

"Did you kill the child?"

The only response was the same silent stare. He focused intently on Kate, mostly, when she was there. It was unnerving, and she avoided the place he was handcuffed unless it was totally necessary that she be there.

"He's not going to break. We haven't given him food or drink since he got here. We've asked him the same questions a thousand times. You have got to let me try some things from the Republican Guard." Sayid was beyond frustrated. He wasn't used to this being so hard.

"No. Jack's said it himself, we're not savages," Kate argued. "There've been relapses, yes," glancing at Sawyer and his bandaged arm, "but there has to be another way."

"Kate, he killed a baby. He's not talking," Jack reasoned.

"What use is he to us?" Sawyer asked. "Just get rid of him."

"He might hold the key to getting off this island," Jack reminded him.

"That doesn't justify more violence!" Kate exclaimed.

"I will give him today. Then we trust Sayid," Jack determined. Sayid nodded; Kate left.


End file.
